Thursday, August 11, 2011

Chants of “MVP” could not be detected both times Curtis Granderson circled the bases on home runs Wednesday night, but it shouldn’t be long now before the chorus becomes a regular feature at Yankee Stadium.

Granderson surely belongs in the conversation for American League Most Valuable Player. Some media types seem ready to just hand the trophy over to Red Sox first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, who is the favorite at this point, but after ...

Washington Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg was unimpressed with Caesar Garcia on Tuesday, never mind the Altamont Little Leaguer’s three-run home run Tuesday in a nationally televised Southwest Regional game from Waco, Texas.
Garcia and his father, in turn, are unimpressed with Strasburg.

Twitter “journalism” at its finest, and further proof that not much of newsworthy consequence occurs in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

When Adrian Gonzalez agreed to compete in the Home Run Derby, he shrugged off the notion that his swing might be adversely affected. But he has only one homer since the All-Star break.

Coincidence?

“No, I completely buy that,” Red Sox [team stats] hitting coach Dave Magadan said before Gonzalez was 0-for-4 in last night’s 5-2 loss to the Twins. “He’s a guy, when he takes batting practice, he doesn’t hit too many balls to the pull side (right field). To go in there in the Home Run ...

That Barton was no fink..as Outsports’ continues its series on the 100 most important moments in gay sports history.

Major League pitcher Jim Bouton had caused quite a stir with his 1970 book, Ball Four. The book chronicled his 1969 season in the Major Leagues and brought to the public eye the rampant womanizing and drug use taking place in Major League Baseball. Bouton was spurned for the book by many in baseball.

In 1976 he co-created and co-wrote a sitcom for CBS with the same name as his ...

When I was looking up information about you on the internet, Wikipedia.com listed you as Steven “Ashtray” Kemp.

“That just goes to show you you can’t believe everything you read on the ‘net. My kids asked me about that once. Maybe some fan was mad at me about something and decided to give me a nickname. But I have no clue. I never smoked, so I have no idea where that came from.”

East Liverpool, Aug. 10.—Hugh Tate, first baseman for the Youngstown ball team playing here Wednesday afternoon, had his right wrist shattered by being struck with a fast shoot pitched by Richie of the local team. Dr. J.L. Pyle…declared the bone in Tate’s wrist had been broken into at least ten pieces.

Many people in the U.K. seem to associate baseball bats with violence, perhaps on account of the long association between the two in American films (like The Warriors), television shows (like The Sopranos), and video games (like Grand Theft Auto). The idea of baseball-related combat has become so common in England that theater companies regularly call BaseballSoftballUK, the country’s development agency for the two sports, seeking bats for staged ...

And the Diamondbacks, by virtue of their 6-3 win at Chase Field on Wednesday night, really are a first-place team again. Coupled with San Francisco’s 9-2 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates earlier in the day, the Diamondbacks leapfrogged the Giants, whom they now lead by a half-game in the NL West.

It was a game in which order was restored in the Diamondbacks’ universe. They had been hammered by these Astros on Monday and then needed every ounce of effort - and every inch of closer J.J. Putz’s ...

Rangers pitcher C.J. Wilson made it clear that he won’t have the Oakland A’s on his list of potential free-agent destinations this winter.

The lefty is slated to open a three-game series at Oakland on Friday night, and on Wednesday before the Rangers closed their homestand against the Seattle Mariners with a 4-3 loss, Wilson said he finds little to like about the team or its home on the east side of the Bay.

On Wednesday night, [Ubaldo] Jimenez made his much-anticipated home debut for the Indians in exactly that scenario. Facing Detroit in an integral game, Jimenez was the beneficiary of a wealth of offense, allowing him to settle in and shut down the Tigers in a 10-3 win at Progressive Field.

The victory shaved the first-place Tigers’ lead over the Tribe (58-56) to just two games in the American League Central.
...
The Indians have now beaten Detroit 13 consecutive times at home… Working with the ...

Having missed his eighth consecutive game Wednesday after spraining his left shoulder last week in New York, Ramirez will now sit out at least six more. For the second time this season the Marlins placed him on the disabled list. He is eligible to return for the start of a four-game series at San Diego, but will miss the next two three-game sets at home against the Giants and on the road at Colorado.

The impact of Ron Santo’s statue outside Wrigley Field goes far beyond sculptor Lou Cella’s spectacular three-color depiction of the third baseman, standing on one leg and leaning right, ready to fire the ball cross-body to first in his patented 1960s image.

The statue’s unveiling on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon spoke so much of Santo’s character and reach to the masses, who packed both Addison Street and Sheffield Avenue ...

Washington, D.C., Aug. 4, 2011 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged former professional baseball player Doug DeCinces and three others with insider trading ahead of a company buyout. The SEC alleges that DeCinces and his associates made more than $1.7 million in illegal profits when Abbott Park, Ill.-based Abbott Laboratories Inc. announced its plan to purchase Advanced Medical Optics Inc. through a tender offer.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

But…but…how’s he supposed to catch Tim Wakefield on the active Wild Pitch list?! He’s only 15 behind in 1,267 less innings! NO FAIR!

If the Yankees took Posada’s job away from him, they should be able to take Burnett’s job away from him, too. Even if it’s a temporary move, the Yankees could tell Burnett that he’s being bypassed in the rotation for one turn to work with pitching coach Larry Rothschild to improve. The Yankees can tell Burnett that he’s important to their success, so ...

Over the past few decades, companies have shifted how they manufacture bats, resulting in an uptick in the number of splintered wooden bats in professional games. According to a published report, two entrepreneurs are working to fortify wooden bats as they endeavor to reduce the number of breaks that occur during Major League Baseball games.

...Nevertheless, two MLB fans, Jim Cortez and Greg Kendra, have developed a method they affirm can help ...

I’m submitting this for two reasons. First, it is, in fact, Garret Richards day, and it’s newsworthy, especially seeing as how his debut comes against the vaunted Yankees. Second, I’m not sure everyone is familiar with Sam Miller, who can be really fun to read, provided you don’t mind reading about the Angels.

• Garrett Richards knows that people hate slow baseball games, so he throws only as many pitches as necessary. Over his past 10 games, he has averaged a touch more than seven innings ...

From the visitors bullpen at Rogers Centre in Toronto, an American League pitcher screamed at Blue Jays right fielder Jose Bautista as he took his position late in a game in the spring of 2010.

“It’s not too [f———] easy to hit home runs when you don’t know what’s coming!”
“We know what you’re doing,” he said, referring to the man in white, according to the player and two witnesses. “If you do it again, I’m going to hit you in the [f———] head.”

It’s hard to overstate just how poor a hitter Mathis truly is. For his career, he has a .197 batting average in 1,299 plate appearances. According to Baseball Reference, there have been just three others players in history to amass 1,300 PAs while batting below the Mendoza Line, and two of them, Mike Ryan and Ray Oyler spent a much of their careers in the 1960s, arguably the most pitcher-friendly era in baseball history. (Even the guy for whom the Mendoza Line was named actually had a career ...

I estimate only 10-12 Primates care about the NBA, but with our own thread, we won’t detract from what this site is really about: whatever the hell is going on in that birther thread which I’m afraid to click on, and whether or not ballpark proposals are a great idea or the greatest idea.

MLB.com’s Barry Bloom and Thomas Harding were robbed at 1:30 a.m. this morning about 15 feet outside Gate 3 at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, Hal McCoy of the Dayton Daily News reports.

“I thought the guy was a fan as he approached, but he said, ‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way,’” said Bloom. “I started to walk away and he began yelling at me and pulled this big gun that looked like a Glock. He said, ‘Put your wallets on the ground.’ We did and he picked ...

But chances are your leisure time is finite, and so is the patience of your family, and you might be forced to choose between watching a four-hour Sox-Yankees game or doing something that doesn’t take nearly as long, like writing She Loves You (as Lennon and McCartney did in three hours) or performing a kidney transplant (which can be done in two to three hours).

Yes, you and I are unlikely to save a life—or create an enduring work of art—in lieu of ...

Whoa, thought that read “Sabermetrician is a tool”...and that they were dredging the statistically-polluted East River for an old quote from John Sterling about Rob Neyer!

It isn’t often that I disagree with Tango, but I would (albeit slightly) with this statement:

Sabermetrics is a process, a tool. It is not an ideology. Sabermetrics would say that a player’s RBI adds no new information, once you know all these other things. Sabermetrics would say that a pitcher’s wins, losses and ...

“I wanna be classified
I wanna be a statistic
I wanna be a clone
I want a suburban home”

A proposal to declare Opening Day a ceremonial holiday in Cincinnati - an idea supporters felt was a sure hit in the birthplace of professional baseball - appears unlikely to qualify for the November ballot.

With thousands of petition signatures having been thrown out, the chance of Cincinnatians voting this fall on the initiative looks about as promising as the 10-games-out-and-dropping-fast Reds making ...